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NCAA Wrestling Championships: An Assisted Recap

Last weekend wasn’t just for NCAA basketball in my family; my parents, brother and sister-in-law all went to St. Louis for the Division I Wrestling championships. I’m sure Chitown Chick would want me to mention that Iowa won, though they did it without having any individual champions (this ESPN article headline sums up the anticlimactic nature of the Hawkeye win).

My brother was kind enough to give me a summary of the more interesting stories of the weekend — he drew the line at helping me pick out the cute wrestlers, but I can do that on my own.

The arms above belong to NC State wrestler Darrion Caldwell. Darrion pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the tournament, defeating Iowa’s Brent Metcalf (who had lost only twice in his college career). Unfortunately, Darrion got a little carried away with his victory celebration and then this happened …

As you may have seen on Deadspin, Brent Metcalf pushed Caldwell in the middle of his celebratory backflip and things deteriorated from there. Nobody really comes out looking good in these situations.

Moving on, the one match I did actually see –during a lull in the Saturday basketball action — also featured an upset, as 12th seeded Jarrod King from Edinboro beat the 2nd seeded Andrew Howe from Wisconsin. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a great match for anyone new to the sport (which was pretty much everyone else in the room), since I ended up having to explain both the stalling rule and why the official didn’t actually call stalling until it was too late. If it weren’t for the on-camera antics of the Wisconsin head coach, the room might have voted to endure more Greg Gumbel until the next basketball tip-off.

My brother also suggested I mention Konrad Dudziak, a Duke heavyweight who lost in the finals. He found this impressive because Duke’s wrestling program offers no scholarships. I found it impressive after discovering (through this interview ) that Konrad is a physics major. It’s not every day you hear a Division I athlete discuss the implications of NASA’s gravity telescope. I like a little brains with my brawn.

5 thoughts on “NCAA Wrestling Championships: An Assisted Recap”

I am so frustrated as a Nebraska fan because of the whole Paul Donahoe situation. He was one of the two who got kicked off our team after appearing on fratmen.tv or whatever site it was. Then he went to Edinboro, and had an undefeated season. Considering the Huskers were hanging right in there in the team standings, I think we reaaaaaally could have used his help.

Yeah, Donahoe probably would have put you guys over the top, Minda, especially with Iowa not being quite as dominant as everyone thought. I was pretty proud of my Tigers — five All-Americans, including a national champion.

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